Those advocating arming Assad’s opposition in Syria assume that because there’s a dictator on one side, the Islamist “rebels” must themselves favor democracy and human rights. Such concepts are alien to Islamist fighters in Syria. To them it’s Sunni vs Shia, not interests of Syrian people-US and UK shouldn’t arm Assad’s opposition, Huffington Post UK, Charles Shoebridge, 3/14/2013

The first is that pouring sophisticated weaponry into a war zone already awash with weaponswill save civilian lives. Whilst this argument may have had some force when the army attacked unarmed demonstrators two years ago, Syria is now in a [some say] civil war in which two well armed sides have achieved military stalemate.

Western politicians often imply Syria’s 70,000 dead have all been killed by the state, a picture further complicated by media quoted opposition activists counting armed rebel fighters as civilians.Estimates suggest security forces have suffered 15,000 fatalities, rebels 10,000, with the remainder being civilians killed by both sides.

Arming one side with better weapons seems unlikely to improve this situation – particularlywhen rebels [Islamist fighters] have been repeatedly condemned, for example this weekby the UN, for murder, kidnapping, torture of prisoners and civilians, use of child soldiers, widespread assaults and corruption against civilians, all without remedial action from the rebel Free Syria Army [Al Qaeda] the West supports.

Rebel tactics of attacking and fighting from densely populated areas, itself a war crime, also inevitably result in heavy weapon use and civilian casualties – as now at previously peaceful Homs and Aleppo, as in the recent past at Gaza and Fallujah. Further arming the rebels will only increase such attacks.

This is why the [Syrian] rebels are backed by [Sunni] Saudi Arabia and Qatar – sectarian dictatorships with no interest in promoting human rights or inclusive secular democracy. They do so to promote their own extreme brand of Sunni Islam, and because a crippled, possibly partitioned Syria isolates and weakens Shia Iran. This also promotes the interests of Israel.

Indeed, if Syria for the US and UK was about human rights and democracy, they would also be backing rebels in their Sunni allies Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar.

Some suggest that Islamist dominance of Syria’s rebellion is reason to arm more moderate groups. As Arab Spring states are discovering however, ‘moderate’ is a relative term. And even assuming such ‘good’ rebels can be found to arm, doing so against ‘bad’ rebels is likely to cause civil war to continue well beyond any fall of Assad, with further appalling civilian suffering. In the chaos of civil war, it will also be impossible to monitor in whose hands such weapons end up.

Added: The Trump at a Trump-Hillary Oct. 2016 debate remembered US “regime changes” always create even worse misery--except for billions pocketed by war profiteers. As useless as televised presidential “debates” are, this one statement by Trump made him sound like a normal person. What caused Trump to flip flop? Either he was lying or he’s been threatened with death.

“Trump: “Now, she [Hillary] talks tough, she talks really tough against Putin and against Assad. She talks in favor of the [Islamist] rebels. She doesn’t even know who the rebels are. You know, every time we take rebels, whether it’s in Iraq or anywhere else, we’re arming people. And you know what happens? They end up being worse than the people [we overthrow]….Look at what she did in Libya with [Muammar] Gaddafi.”…

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[Moderator] Raddatz’s biased framing also put Republican Donald Trump on the defensive for resisting yet another American “regime change” project in Syria….While one can’t blame Raddatz for Trump’s scattered thinking – or for Clinton’s hawkishness – the moderator’s failure to frame the Syrian issue in a factual and nuanced way contributed to this dangerously misleading “debate” on a grave issue of war and peace….Given the stakes of a possible nuclear war with Russia–this propagandistic style of “journalism” is fast becoming an existential threat.…The American people are receiving a highly distorted view of the Syrian war-much propaganda, little truth-including from one of the moderators at the second presidential debate.”…

National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough also attended the meeting, according to the source.

The White House declined comment.

Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, reported on Saturday that Obama had met with columnists and magazine writers but did not name the attendees.

Baker wrote that three New York Times columnists and one editorial writer attended, but indicated they weren’t sources for his story. Since the meeting was off the record, the Times columnistscould not report what Obama said. But Baker, a Times reporter not in attendance, was under no obligation to withhold the fact that the meeting took place.

Obama’s decision to escalate the war Wednesday followed several weeks of calls by politicians and punditsfor him to expand the air campaign against the Islamic State, even as the intelligence community and terrorism experts said the militant group poses no imminent threat [9/9/2014] to the United States.”